About This Project

Traffic on NJ-42 has inspired me to find out how much happiness I have lost there. We all commute (if we are lucky to have a job), and we are often (if not always) stuck in traffic, which makes us unhappy. Which US cities should we choose to live, and where in those cities should we live so that we can be happy? I will link commuting and congestion data with happiness data at county level in a statistical model (multilevel regression) to answer above questions.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

I have been studying happiness with focus on cities, and found that people are least happy in largest cities. Arguably, one key nuisance is congestion. We know that out of all usual activities people are least happy during commute. But we do not know yet how congestion is related to happiness across US cities!

What is the significance of this project?

If you happen to drive on NJ-42, you may also wonder what is your happiness loss. The goal is to find out how much happiness we lose due to congestion and traffic. It is very important for each of us, as we all want to be happy! We deserve to know happiness cost of commute, and such knowledge will enable us to make informed decisions.

What are the goals of the project?

First, I will combine commute data with congestion data and happiness data across US counties. Then I will investigate the relationships. The goal is to find out the effect of congestion and commute on happiness, but also find out how urbanicity (central city, suburb, rural) affects happiness given congestion and traffic. For instance, are suburbanites less happy than urbanites if traffic is horrendous? Finally, I will zoom in onto several major cities such as Philadelphia and Dallas and contrast results with personal observations.